As many of you may know, on Friday, May 2, 2025, arts organizations nationwide receiving grant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were informed that their grants had been terminated or cancelled. The Center for Black Literature was one of the organizations whose grant was terminated.
The Center for Black Literature’s role and impact in sharing, educating, enlightening, and advocating for the advancement and uplifting of Black literature and its artists across the Diaspora has been a labor of love for more than two decades.
Support from the NEA was a major pillar that upheld our important work. Without that support, programming that has become a staple of the literary world and to our constituents will be curtailed at best and ended at worst.
For more than twenty years the gathering during the National Black Writers Conference, and its Symposium, John Oliver Killens Reading Series, Writers on Writing radio show, theKillens Review of Arts and Letters, Wild Seeds Retreat for Writers of Color, monthly Book Club, the Dr. Edith Rock Elders Writing Workshop and Re-Envisioning our Lives Through Literature (ROLL) our youth program, the Center for Black Literature has been an intergenerational beacon of knowledge, fellowship and community building.
